New Scandal Creates Crisis at BBC

By

Paul Sonne And

Cassell Bryan-Low

Updated Nov. 12, 2012 7:28 a.m. ET

LONDON—The British Broadcasting Corp. was plunged into disarray over the weekend as its top executive resigned over the mishandling of two sex-abuse reports and the chairman of its supervisory body called for "a thorough, structural, radical overhaul" of the broadcaster.

George Entwistle resigned as BBC director-general late Saturday after just 55 days on the job, citing "unacceptable journalistic standards" that current-affairs program "Newsnight" displayed on Nov. 2, when it improperly accused a former Conservative Party official of committing child sex abuse in Wales.

Mishandling of a second sex abuse story has led George Entwistle and two senior news directors to leave the BBC. WSJ's Paul Sonne looks at what is going wrong at the corporation and how the scandal could affect its future.

Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, which supervises the broadcaster, on Sunday called for an overhaul of the BBC. He said a siloed and bureaucratic culture had led managers to shirk responsibility and resulted in what he had described as "unacceptable shoddy journalism."

Regarding Mr. Entwistle's resignation, "I think he felt he should take responsibility for the awful journalism which disfigured that 'Newsnight' program," Mr. Patten said. "One of the ironies is that he was a brilliantly successful editor of 'Newsnight' himself for some time." A trust spokeswoman said Mr. Entwistle would receive a year's salary, £450,000 ($715,000), as a payout tied to his resignation.

Tim Davie, director of BBC Audio and Music, was appointed acting BBC director-general until the trust finds a successor for Mr. Entwistle.

A BBC spokesman said Mr. Entwistle declined to comment for this article. "In the light of the fact that the director general is also the editor in chief and ultimately responsible for all content…I have decided that the honorable thing to do is to step down," Mr. Entwistle said in his statement Saturday.

The Director General of the BBC George Entwistle resigned Saturday following the company's mishandling of two sex-abuse scandals. The BBC came under heavy scrutiny after reports that stories about the scandals had been shelved. Photo: Getty Images.

The situation presents one of the biggest crises in the history of the 90-year-old broadcaster. The BBC derives £3.6 billion ($5.7 billion) in annual funding from licenses that are mandatory in the U.K. for owners of television sets, opening the broadcaster to public scrutiny. Many Britons refer to the national institution as "Auntie" or "the Beeb."

The BBC is by far the biggest news organization in the U.K. and among the largest in the world, with about 20,000 employees, annual income of £5.1 billion and operations that range from investigative journalism to making feature films. Its sheer size makes it difficult for one person to oversee all the BBC's output.

The broadcaster has weathered several scandals in recent years, including controversy over the high pay of its stars and executives, and accusations of age and sex bias in selecting on-air talent.

The most damaging scandals, however, have been those tied to the BBC's newsgathering operation, which sits at the heart of the British network's mission of public service. The broadcaster's chairman and the director-general both resigned in 2004 amid an uproar over a BBC report saying the British government purposefully "sexed up" a dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A public inquiry ruled that the report had been unfounded and described the BBC's editorial policies as defective.

Now similar accusations are again being leveled against the BBC in relation to the Nov. 2 "Newsnight" report.

ENLARGE

BBC Director General George Entwistle
Reuters

BBC News Home Editor Mark Easton suggested in a blog post that Mr. Entwistle, 50 years old, had to resign because his short tenure earned him "a reputation as 'incurious George,' a man without a grip on an organization in deep crisis."

The events that led to Mr. Entwistle's resignation unfolded in three main stages.

First, rival broadcaster ITV PLC aired a documentary last month that accused one of the BBC's most famous television personalities of sexually abusing girls. The accusations against the late Jimmy Savile, who died last year at 84, dated mostly to the 1960s and 1970s, when he hosted the popular BBC shows "Top of the Pops" and "Jim'll Fix It." Mr. Savile had denied he was a pedophile.

It later emerged that "Newsnight" journalists had been preparing their own exposé of Mr. Savile's alleged wrongdoing late last year, only to see it shelved by management ahead of holiday tributes to Mr. Savile. The BBC attempted to explain why the 2011 report had been killed but the broadcaster's explanation contained inaccuracies.

"Newsnight" subsequently decided to pursue a different investigation into sex abuse at a children's home in Wales dating to the 1970s and 1980s. But that report was bungled. The Nov. 2 program appeared to accuse 70-year-old Alistair McAlpine of committing sexual abuse but described him only as a "leading Conservative politician" and gave the former House of Lords member no opportunity to reply.

The BBC report crumbled on Friday. Mr. McAlpine issued a detailed denial. And the report's main source, alleged abuse victim Steven Messham, said he had identified the wrong man to the BBC. Mr. Messham said he realized his mistake after seeing a photo of Mr. McAlpine.

The way the Nov. 2 report unfolded raised questions about the BBC's journalistic practices. The sensitive report was prepared for "Newsnight" by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit group based at London's City University. The journalist that headed the report was BIJ reporter Angus Stickler, who had worked for 16 years at the BBC and won awards for investigations into child abuse.

The morning the show aired, BIJ editor Iain Overton announced via Twitter, "If all goes well we've got a Newsnight out tonight about a very senior political figure who is a pedophile."

Reporters and people on social media attempted to identify the subject, and by later that day, Mr. McAlpine's name had surfaced in some newsrooms and on Twitter.

Messrs. Overton and Stickler didn't respond to requests for comment.

One person who apparently didn't hear about the report was Mr. Entwistle. The BBC's editor in chief said Saturday that he wasn't made aware of the report before it aired.

The BBC issued an apology for the report and put all "Newsnight" investigations on hold "to assess editorial robustness and supervision." The network also commissioned a BBC executive to prepare a report on the incident and suspended all co-productions with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

"It's astonishing it didn't get referred to Entwistle," British media lawyer Mark Stephens said Sunday, because Mr. Entwistle at least might need to be prepared to answer questions about the report from politicians. "Entwistle was clearly let down," which was partly his fault and partly the fault of others, Mr. Stephens said.

The BIJ is "appalled at what appears to be a breach of its standards," its trustees said. "To the extent that the principles of the bureau have been ignored by an involvement in this story, remedial action will be taken against those responsible."

Mr. Patten, the BBC Trust chairman, said News Corp.'s British publications have been critical of the broadcaster and want the network to lose credibility with its audience. "But I think the great British public doesn't want to see that happen," he said. News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, declined to comment.

Jeremy Paxman, a "Newsnight" presenter and one of Britain's best-known journalists, described Mr. Entwistle's departure as "a great shame." The BBC boss had "been brought low by cowards and incompetents," Mr. Paxman said in a written statement. The problems at "Newsnight" had been compounded by the BBC's decision to cut budgets for front-line programs, he said, while bloating management in part with "biddable people."

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